Recommended Reading by Sheryl Sutherland: Girls Just Want to Have Fund$ - Every Women’s Guide to Financial Independence, Money, Money, Money Ain't it Funny - How to Wire your Brain for Wealth, and Smart Money - How to structure your New Zealand business or investments and pay less tax.

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Sheryl is an Authorised Financial Adviser (AFA). A Disclosure Statement in accordance with the provisions of the Securities Markets Act 1988 and the Securities Markets (Investment Advisers and Brokers) Regulations 2010 is available free of charge by emailing tamyra@strategies.co.nz or phoning 0800 64MONEY (0800 646 6639)

About Me

Sheryl Sutherland of Women’s Financial Strategies began financial planning in 1981 with her own business based in Christchurch. Sheryl is an obsessive reader, and cat owner. She is married and has two divine (naturally) children.
Sheryl has a B.A (Otago) Dip F.A.C. (Otago) and a DipPFinPlan (Waikato).
Sheryl has written three books, Girls Just Want to Have Fund$ - Every Women’s Guide to Financial Independence (2005), Money, Money, Money Ain't it Funny - How to Wire your Brain for Wealth (2007) and her latest book, co-authored with Martz Witty, is Smart Money - How to structure your New Zealand business or investments and pay less tax (2010).
Sheryl has appeared on the Breakfast Show with Paul Henry and regularly appears on CTV Newsmakers with Mike Yardley. She has been on radio shows such as Radio Live with Kerry Smith, Women on Air, Sunshine FM, Radioworks/More FM, Radio VIVA, and Newstalk ZB.
Sheryl has featured in publications such as Woman Today, Dunedin Public Library Magazine, Hawkes Bay Today, Sunday Star Times Magazine, Sunday Star Times, The Press, Avenues Magazine, Dominion Post, Paper Plus Catalogue, and Doubleday Australia.

Tuesday, 17 January 2017

The gender pay gap persists almost
everywhere – and has done so since pre Victorian times.

On average, women earn 18% less than men, according to analysis by Korn Ferry
Hay Group, a consulting firm which looked at more than 8m employees in 33
countries. The pay gap is largely explained by a lack of women in highly paid
roles. Women make up 40% of the global workforce for clerical jobs but only 17%
of executive roles. However, the pay gap shrinks when comparing males and
females working at an identical level and function within the same company (but
still favours men by 1.6%).

In Britain, more than four decades after the equal pay act was introduced,
the headline difference between men and women’s pay is still high. A pledge
made in 2015 by David Cameron, Britain's prime minister, to “end the gender pay
gap in a generation” is an ambitious one. Women only make up around a third of
senior management roles there. Workers at the same level but in different
companies still face an average pay gap of over 9%.

The United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, has a reverse pay gap. Women at
the same level, company and function actually earn 2% more than their male
counterparts. This is partly because fewer women participate in the labour
force, and those that do tend to have higher levels of education. In 2014 women
made up 13% of the labour force; in Britain the share was 46%.

The 7 Habits
of Highly Effective Investors

These are the
basics of running your financial life.

In a recent study, just 8 percent of college students taking a recent survey
gave themselves an A for how well they manage their finances. In a larger, 2014
survey of U.S. adults, 18 percent gave themselves the top grade for their personal
finance knowledge.

Many people
get stressed even thinking about managing their money, seeing it as just too
complicated. But Harold Pollack, a University of Chicago professor, famously
fit the basics of good personal finance on an index card.

Here are
seven simple ways to increase the odds of getting in and staying in good
financial shape.

Once you’ve
got these covered, you can explore investment opportunities.

1. Save
early, and automatically

The point is
just to get in the habit of saving. Even if you start small, it’s a start. And
seeing your money grow can be very motivating.

2. Expect
financial emergencies

About 47
percent of respondents wouldn’t be able to cover an emergency $400 expense
without selling something or borrowing money. So when you start saving, you may
want to set aside money for an emergency fund before saving for retirement.
That’s because, in a financial emergency, many people just tap into a
retirement fund early and pay a penalty.

3. Set an
asset allocation, and diversify

Asset
allocation is an investor’s most important decision, said Bernstein. Research
by numerous finance professors has shown that the vast majority of returns over
time come from asset allocation rather than picking the right security or the
right time to invest in the market.

One rough
rule of thumb Bernstein uses for setting a stock-bond allocation is that your
age should equal your bond allocation. A 50-50 or 60-40 split is a good
starting point, he said, but then you need to figure out your risk tolerance
and tweak your portfolio to reflect that.

4. Keep fees
low

With many
people expecting future stock market returns to be muted, it’s more important
than ever to keep fees low. Situations in which a retirement saver gets
conflicted advice—meaning an adviser gets fees and commissions if the client
buys a particular product—lead to returns roughly 1 percentage point lower per
year, according to a report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
The council estimated the aggregate annual cost of conflicted advice on Superannuation
assets at about $17 billion a year.

For most
people, keeping investments simple is the most cost-effective strategy. Warren
Buffett is a longtime fan of investing in low-cost index funds, and in his 2013
Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter, Buffett shared the advice he gave to his
estate’s trustee:

5. Use a qualified
adviser

Late-night
television isn’t the place to find financial wisdom.

6. Spend less
than you earn

Spending more
than they earn is a pattern for 23 percent of millennials and 19 percent of Gen
Xers, according to a 2014 study by the Financial Industry Regulatory
Authority’s Investor Education Foundation. So it’s not surprising that only
about a third of each demographic has an emergency fund in place.

Part of what
can make it tough to build an emergency fund is lifestyle creep. As we
(hopefully) earn more, we often ratchet up our spending—we upgrade phones or
cars, or take fancier vacations—rather than increasing our superannuation contributions by 1 percent, or setting a
higher amount of savings to automatically be taken out of pay.

Gender pay gap in children's pocket money as boys get 12% more than girls.

There was also a gender gap last year but it was just 2%. It’s reasonable to
assume that the New Zealand situation reflects that of the UK.

Boys received almost 12 per cent more weekly pocket money compared to girls,
according to the Halifax’s annual pocket money survey of more than 1,200
children and 575 parents.

The gender gap grew from only 2 per cent the year before.

In 2016, boys between eight and fifteen received an average of £6.93 per
week, compared to girls who got an average of £6.16.

“The big increase in the pocket money pay gap doesn’t bode well for the
future. If we’re ever going to get pay equality in the workplace girls need to
be empowered with the confidence to drive a hard bargain and learn to be unafraid
to ask if they think they should be ‘paid’ more; this needs to start at
home," said Hannah Maundrell, editor in chief at Money.co.uk.

"Teaching your kids the value of money and the importance of
negotiation when they’re young will really set them up for success when they
enter the real world," she added.

On average, eight year olds receive £5.06 with 15 year olds receiving £7.85
- the highest level recorded since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007.

Giles Martin, head of Halifax Savings said it is “reassuring” to see that
the average pocket money amount has reached a nine year high.

“Some parents are clearly not feeling the pinch in the same way as they have
done in recent years, when weekly pocket money dipped as low as £5.89”, Martin
said.

“It’s likely it’ll be a few more years until we reach the dizzy heights of
£8.37 in 2005 though, when we saw the highest average pocket money since our
records began ,” she added.

Despite the pocket money pay rise, 42 per cent of children still believe
they should receive more cash than they do, up 1 per cent from last year.

Children living in London receive the highest amount of pocket money with
youngsters in East Anglia getting the least.

Finance industry fails to
attract female investors

Women savers alienated by ads for ‘older rich men.’

The finance industry is failing to attract cash from female
investors who feel “alienated” by jargon-filled marketing campaigns designed to
appeal to wealthy older men, given my experiences in that industry can’t say
I’m surprised.

Advertisements used by the investment industry are confusing women rather than
inspiring confidence, a new study has claimed, citing this as one reason women
are more likely to hold their savings in cash rather than invest them in
funds.Read Girls Just Want to Have
Fund$ for more on this.

“In a workshop we held, women were literally shrieking at
the investment and financial services advertisements we showed them,” said
Deborah Mattinson, founding director of Britain Thinks, the consultancy that
conducted the research for the Financial Times. She added they were described
as “alienating, overly complicated and riddled with jargon”. The least
successful ads assumed a level of knowledge that women did not have, including
the “profit hunter” campaign by Artemis Fund Managers, which women thought was
aimed only at “older men” who had a “substantial amount to invest”. If women
were featured in adverts at all, they tended to be “yummy mummies with
idealised lives” which women felt “did not reflect their reality”, Ms Mattinson
added. Previous studies have found only 10 per cent of British women have a
stocks and shares Isa, compared to 17 per cent of men, meaning they are missing
out on long-term growth potential. Women were more likely to describe
themselves as “less knowledgable about investing” than men, and rely on their
male partners to come up with investment ideas, according to a survey of 2,000
male and female investors conducted on behalf of the FT by Britain Thinks.
Personal Finance Why do most women fear the stock market? Why women lack the
confidence to invest — and what to do about it Senior women in the asset
management industry believe a substantial marketing makeover is needed to help
address this, with new methods — such as videos and online tools — as well as a
broader message. “Asset managers are extremely good at talking to each other,
but extremely bad at talking to anyone else,” said Diana Mackay, chief
executive of MackayWilliams, the research house. Recognising that many women
tended to sit on cash as they were “terrified at the thought of investment”,
she urged fund managers to “start talking in a language the end investor can
understand” adding that this would benefit both sexes. Sue Noffke, a senior
fund manager at Schroders, said she believed it was a lack of confidence,
rather than competence, that was holding women back. The investment trust she
manages is using videos to broaden its appeal. “There really is a market
opportunity for financial services firms,” Ms Noffke said. “Women are a large
part of the market. Financial services firms are not doing what is required to
access that market opportunity.”

Women bosses boost female places in boardroom

Having a female boss makes it more likely that there will be
more women on your board, according to new research.

Headhunter Spencer Stuart, which compiles an annual report
reviewing governance at the UK’s largest listed companies, found that boards
have significantly more female directors where the chief executive or chairman
is also a woman. The proportion of women serving as non-executive directors at
the UK’s top 150 public companies has reached 29.9 per cent, up from 17.5 per
cent in 2011. On the six boards where there is a female chairman, such as
Shire, led by Susan Kilsby, Land Securities and St James Place, just under 40
per cent of non-executives are women. In companies where there is a female
chief executive, 35.4 per cent of executive committee members are women. In
2016, 30 per cent of non-executive directors were women, but only 8 per cent of
executive directors. The data support persistent concerns that appointing more
women to boards has had little effect on the gender imbalance at senior
management level.

“This reflects the fact that the majority of companies at
the top of the FTSE have a truly global footprint and boards have long
understood the importance of having directors with knowledge and experience of
strategic markets,” the research said. A quarter of chief executives are
foreign, as are 17 per cent of chairmen. Fifteen companies have both a foreign
chairman and a foreign CEO. Mr Dawkins said the Britain’s exit from the EU was
unlikely to diminish the international scope of FTSE 150 businesses, and thus
the need for foreign expertise on domestic boards. “The signs are, from the
thinking we see among nominations committees in the FTSE 150, that the
proportion of non-UK directors will continue to rise, in line with the
businesses’ increasing foreign exposure, possibly spurred by the weakness of
sterling,” he said. Only 23 directors at the top 150 FTSE companies are black,
Asian or from another minority ethnic group, representing just 1.6 per cent of
all directors. Fifty other directors were from BAME backgrounds, but were not
British citizens. The question of broader ethnic representation has come under
greater scrutiny with the release of Sir John Parker’s review into board
diversity this month. Just nine people of colour hold the role of chair or
chief executive at FTSE 100 companies and more than half have no minority
ethnic directors at all.

In her 1968 poem, Planetarium,
the poet Adrienne Rich wrestles with the crisis of female identity through the
lens of astronomy. Rich wrote the poem after learning about the case of
Caroline Herschel, an astronomer born in Germany in 1750 who discovered
eight comets and three nebulae, and drew praise from the King of Prussia and
London’s Royal Astronomical Society. Yet Caroline remained obscure compared
with her brother, William, who discovered the planet Uranus.

To this day, astronomy remains
one of the only scientific fields that relies so heavily on ancient Greek and
Roman mythology for its naming conventions. Cosmology and mythology have been
interwoven throughout human history, so it’s not surprising that modern-day
astronomers have inherited this tradition. But classical mythology is deeply
misogynistic, and using it to identify celestial bodies contributes to a
scientific culture that diminishes the achievements of women like Caroline. Male
deities and figures reign with nearly unlimited power, while their female
counterparts suffer violence and humiliation.

Among the
myths we have used to name and claim the heavens is Cassiopeia, a constellation
in the northern hemisphere. It is named for a mythical queen of Aethiopia, whom
Poseidon punished for her vanity by lashing her to her throne. Cassiopeia’s
daughter, Andromeda, was also made to suffer for her mother’s sins by being
chained naked to a rock, where she waited for the sea monster Cetus to rape
her. In the myth, Perseus saved Andromeda and took her as his wife, but as a
constellation, she still waits chained to her rock.

The Pleiades,
also known as the Seven Sisters, is a cluster of stars in the Taurus
constellation. The Seven Sisters were once women who danced together under the
night sky, but Orion desired them, so he hunted them for seven years. To help
the sisters escape, Zeus turned them all into stars – but Orion, another
constellation, still chases them night after night.

Male astronomers,
when they look at the sky, can find more uplifting role models. The
constellations named after men tell stories of heroism and conquest, not
submission and subjugation. Even today, NASA continues to recycle the names of
mythological figures and great men of history when naming spacecraft and
missions. Orion, a crewed spacecraft meant to facilitate travel to Mars, is
named for the same Orion that hunted the Seven Sisters. Kepler, Galileo,
Copernicus, and Cassini – names pulled from the scientific establishment that
excluded women like Caroline – are all unmanned spacecraft sent to explore the
cosmos. Even spacecraft with seemingly gender neutral names are coded male:
Voyager and Pioneer evoke the men who heroically left home and hearth on
voyages of exploration.

There are
exceptions. Sojourner, a Mars rover, was named after Sojourner Truth, the
escaped slave who became a women’s rights activist and abolitionist. But it’s
telling that this name was suggested by a 12-year-old girl in an essay contest,
rather than originating in the scientific establishment. ARTEMIS, a spacecraft
in orbit behind the Moon, is named for the Greek goddess of the hunt, virginity
and childbirth. Yet this too has gendered implications, since Artemis is
associated with purity and motherhood, two features of classical femininity.
Juno, an unmanned spacecraft, is currently observing the planet Jupiter; in
Roman mythology, she was Jupiter’s wife, and had the ability to see
through the clouds of mist that he used to conceal his infidelities. Juno
the spacecraft will attempt the same thing – and so even now, when we send a
female-named spacecraft to investigate the cosmos, the mission invokes a
domestic metaphor. (Alice Bowman, NASA’s Mission Operations Manager for the New
Horizons’ mission to study the outer edges of the solar system, is commonly
referred to as ‘MOM’.)

Today, the skies are still
filtered through this tradition of mythic misogyny. Naming
conventions for spacecraft and constellations are a subtle but significant way
that the discipline of astronomy perpetuates a male-dominated culture.
Simply giving more celestial bodies female names is not the
solution. Rather, change must begin with the recognition that astronomy’s
self-image is built upon an age-old habit of telling stories about the abuse of
women.